Review
The Planet Crafter: playing God on a living, breathing planet
by Debora Pape
Factory construction, exploration and flaming hell: this is "Star Rupture"
13/1/2026
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Debora Pape
On the planet Arcadia-7, I build extensive factories, roam the neighbourhood and fight beetle-like aliens. Meanwhile, the planet's central star wants to make barbecue food out of me. The game captivates me immediately.
Glinding light blinds me, then a wall of fire approaches at breakneck speed. I watch the spectacle through the window of my protective base. The living module is shaken and creaks alarmingly as the explosion wave passes with force and scorches the surface of the planet Arcadia-7. The ground outside is lava, the outer shell of my dwelling is glowing.
When the inferno is over and I venture out of the airlock, I enter a rocky, scorched black wasteland. Where plants had just been growing by a pretty lake, only barren rocky ground remains. Flakes of ash swirl through the air. The cause of this hell of flames is an eruption of the sun, a star called Ruptura. It regularly covers the planet with eruptions like this. I have to hurry before the next apocalypse comes: I have a factory to build.
The early access game «Star Rupture» is like a child of the automation classic «Satisfactory» and the open-world survival game «The Planet Crafter»: It combines the mechanised mining of resources and the establishment of complex production lines with the exploration of an open world. Plus the fight against aggressive aliens who notice me from afar and chase me across half the planet until I or they are dead.
The eternal cycle of combustion
Every 50 to 60 minutes, my AI assistant warns me of an impending solar flare. I then have about two minutes to get to safety. It's a bad idea to marvel at the apocalypse without a roof over your head - believe me: I've tried it. Even small rock caves don't offer sufficient protection. The heat kills me anyway and I find myself back in the base with an empty inventory after my demise. The huge eruption never fails to impress and teaches me respect for the game world.
After the conflagration has subsided, silence reigns. My red-hot production facilities have a break while they cool down. I find glowing chunks of rock in the black, charred surroundings, which I collect and later trade in for scientific data.
The planet takes around 20 minutes to recover after an eruption. During this time, plants slowly reclaim the charred planetary surface. The flora and fauna of Arcadia-7 cannot be kept down. Even the pesky insect-like aliens are digging themselves out of the ground again. It's worth using this time of calm after the storm for undisturbed exploration and then continuing to build the factory.
Factory construction à la «Satisfactory»
It's easy to see where the inspiration for the smelting furnaces and fabricators that form the backbone of my base came from. They are visually and functionally similar to the popular factory building game «Satisfactory». Mining machines excavate titanium, tungsten and calcium from the corresponding deposits. I use automated lorries to deliver the materials via rails to processing plants that use them to manufacture various products. For «Satisfactory» veterans, this looks stolen.
The purpose of the company is also almost the same: I produce stuff for powerful corporations on Earth and send them the manufactured stuff via export facilities. As a reward, I unlock new plants or production schemes.
I control Chris Bonnet, a prisoner serving his sentence on Arcadia-7. During the tutorial, he asks the AI assistant why he has to unlock all these blueprints first. It would be much easier if the corporations provided them to him straight away. An astute question!
In response, the assistant plays him an audio recording of a company chairwoman: «There's no way I'm giving my patents to that scum. They couldn't care less about laws and intellectual property. Fine, if it's absolutely necessary and they really deserve it, then fine. And don't quote me.». The tutorial is also brimming with sarcasm and witty dialogue between Chris and the AI helper.
Simplified transport and construction system
Compared to «Satisfactory», the transport of materials requires less thinking on my part: the lorries transport the materials unerringly along the rail network to where they need to go. I can't yet say how this will affect my network later on - less control is helpful at the beginning, but could lead to chaos later on.
I don't have to worry about the power supply either. The tracks, platforms and paths all have integrated power lines. I think that's good. The power supply tends to be an annoying appendage on the to-do list in factory building games anyway.
I also really like the global construction grid. No matter where I build a new layout in the world: I can integrate it into the network at any time using the square foundations. A flying drone helps me with construction almost from the start, which I can use to build or demolish facilities from a bird's eye view instead of a first-person perspective.
Base building á la «Planet Crafter»
My living area is made up of individual modules that I connect together. As in «Planet Crafter», I can only build some systems in this protected area, such as the terminal for unlocking new blueprints. I also install storage boxes here. However, furniture and decorative items as well as the option to grow your own plants are not yet available. So the living area remains rather rudimentary. As a fan of architectural masterpieces, I would like to have more options.
In «Planet Crafter», however, there are no hostile critters attacking me or my base. In «Star Rupture» there are. One of the corporations for which I fulfil orders not only provides me with blueprints for better weapons, but also for a gun for automatic base defence. If I expand my factory far beyond the initial area, I'll need it.
A bizarre landscape lies at my feet
When the eruption cycle allows it and production is running, I go exploring. The design team has done a great job with the landscape: My screenshot button is glowing. Rugged cliffs border green, mossy plains, with bizarre rock formations rising into the sky in between. Here and there are colourful plants that I collect to quench my hunger and thirst. Later, I can process them into more energising food in a special plant.
The fact that I am not the first person on Arcadia-7 is immediately apparent from the many legacies of my predecessors, of whom I occasionally find charred corpses. There are abandoned bases and crashed wrecks to explore. I still have to find out how to get further away from the base without being scorched by Ruptura at some point.
On the way, I find records of other people who tell me something about their fate. I also keep finding strange, radioactively contaminated monoliths. My AI assistant points out to me that information about this is a secret. I also quickly find radioactively contaminated areas. I take a look at them as soon as I can produce radiation-resistant equipment.
This almost artistically beautiful landscape is accompanied by a pleasant soundtrack, which you can get an impression of on Steam. The game design is definitely a success.
Conclusion on the early access title
My first impression of «Star Rupture» is consistently positive. The eruption waves feel powerful and ensure that I have to align my activities with the rhythm of the sun. I assume that I will be able to better arm myself against this later on in order to expand my expeditions. The fact that the world literally burns once an hour and changes radically is something I haven't seen in other games.
Fully regenerated, the world has nothing to hide. Nothing looks uniform or lovelessly generated. Thanks to small rivulets of water that snake down the rocky slopes, the landscape almost looks photorealistic. I always see something in the distance that invites me to explore: ruins, strange trees or a geostation with which I can uncover another part of the map.
I can't say at the moment whether my factory in «Star Rupture» will be as big as in «Satisfactory». I like the idea of being able to alternate between exploration and factory building. The roadmap for Early Access and beyond promises a lot more content in all areas. I'm looking forward to it!
«Star Rupture» has been available in Early Access for PC since 6 January. The game was provided to me by Creepy Jar for testing purposes.
Header image: Creepy Jar
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
Background information
Interesting facts about products, behind-the-scenes looks at manufacturers and deep-dives on interesting people.
Show allThese articles might also interest you
16 comments
later